Book of the Week: COUNTERFUTURES

COUNTERFUTURES is a multidisciplinary journal of Left research, thought, and alternatives, with a focus on Aotearoa. The essays, articles, interviews and reviews are urgent, thoughtful, and vital. This issue includes:

• An interview with Franco ‘Bifo’ Bifardi on ‘Futurism without a future’, and on using psychoanalysis to comprehend political events today.

• A review of Eleanor Catton’s novel Birnam Wood, which situates it within a revision of the South Island myth that has occupied a privileged place in settler aesthetic traditions.

• An assessment of the 2023 New Zealand General Election by Metiria Turei, Sue Bradford, and Jack Foster, and its implications for left politics in Aotearoa.

• An exploration by Neil Vallelly of the entwined relationship between democracy and violence, as revealed in the current Israeli siege of Gaza.

• An analysis of the ‘religious right’ and its involvement in politics in Aotearoa, by Isabella Gregory.

• An overview of contesting Treaty histories, by Emma Gattey.

• Essays on the growing importance of a nationally co-ordinated union movement; the possibilities of inclusive debt forgiveness; the meeting of theory and the lived experience of sex workers in Aotearoa.

• Previous issues are available on the Counterfutures website.